Our adventurers, witnesses of the fact, wondered also--while struck with its quaint peculiarity. There is a proverb that "one man may take a horse to the water, but twenty cannot compel him to drink." Though this proverb may hold good of an English horse, it has no significance when applied to an African dromedary. Proof: our adventurers saw the owner of each camel bring his animal to the edge of the pool; but instead of permitting the thirsty creature to step in and drink for itself, its head was held aloft; a wooden funnel was filled, the narrow end inserted into the nostril, and by the respiratory canal the water introduced to the throat and stomach. You may ask, why this selection of the nostrils, instead of the mouth? Our adventurers so interrogated one another. It was only after becoming better acquainted with the customs of the Saara, that they acquired a satisfactory explanation of one they had frequent occasion to observe. Though ordinarily of the most docile disposition, and in most of its movements the most tranquil of creatures, the dromedary, when drinking from a vessel, has the habit of repeatedly shaking its head, and spilling large quantities of the water placed before it. Where water is scarce, and, as in the Saara, considered the most momentous matter of life, a waste of it after such fashion could not be tolerated. To prevent it, therefore, the camel-owner has contrived that this animal, so essential to his own safe existence, should drink through the orifices intended by nature for its respiration. CHAPTER FORTY. A SQUABBLE BETWEEN THE SHEIKS. The process of watering the camels was carried on with the utmost diligence and care. It was too important to be trifled with, or negligently performed. While filling the capacious stomachs of the quadrupeds, their owners were but laying in a stock for themselves. As Sailor Bill jocularly remarked, "it was like filling the water-casks of a man-of-war previous to weighing anchor for a voyage." In truth, very similar was the purpose for which these ships of the desert were being supplied; for, when filling the capacious stomachs of the quadrupeds, their owners were not without the reflection that the supply might yet pass into their own. Such a contingency was not improbable, neither would it be new. For this reason the operation was conducted with diligence and care, no camel being led away from the pool until it was supposed to have had a "surfeit", and this point was settled by seeing the water poured in at its nostrils running out at its mouth. As each in turn got filled, it was taken back to the tribe to which it belonged; for the united hordes had by this time become separated into two distinct parties, preparatory to starting off on their respective routes.